Portland Public Schools saw its percentage of regular attenders this academic year increase 1.4 percentage points from the previous year.
A June 11 presentation to the Portland School Board’s teaching, learning and enrollment committee showed the district had increased regular attendance from 64% to 65.4%. (In Oregon, a student is considered a regular attender if they attend 90% or more of their days enrolled in school.) It also made progress among its focal group students, ranging from a 0.5 percentage point increase for multilingual learners to a 6.7 percentage point increase for American Indian and Alaska Native students.
But Dr. Jill Bryant, assistant director of the district’s multitiered system of support, acknowledged PPS had fallen behind in its attempt at a “lofty” goal for the school year—raising attendance by 5 percentage points. Similarly, PPS is behind its hopes for its focal groups—it had hoped to increase numbers for each group by 8 percentage points…